Veteran’s Day
Today was Veteran’s Day, and in Redburrow’s education centre, the air was buzzing with excitement.
“Hello children! Today is Veteran’s day!” a scribe said to her class of younglings. None of them were much more than seven or eight phases old. They were still bright-eyed and naive, with a spark of innocent curiosity as yet untouched by the coldness of life.
“We’re going to take a walk down to a veteran’s home and talk to them, and find out about their experiences in the war! Isn’t that exciting?”Excitedly the children were squealing and jumping around, and if not for their fascination with the veterans they would have been nigh-uncontrollable. The scribe began to lead her class of fifteen out of the classroom and down the corridors of the education centre. The veteran lived less than half a mile away, and the younglings were always eager for a walk.
Whittled tunnels made of crudely-mined rock composed the entirety of their journey, lit by a thin stream of lava on either side. The younglings had lived down here their whole lives, but the scribe had once spent time on the surface.
Oranges, reds, blacks, blues. The colours of the sky. The scribe had lived down here far too long and now her fond memories of the overworld were blurred and dreary. More than anything she wished to return, but with the war effort, all routes to the surface were blocked and guarded. Besides, she had found her place here as a teacher. The younglings needed her.
Relatively relaxed, the group of students and teacher eventually arrived at a stone door inset into the side of the tunnel. The scribe knocked, and the stone panel slid away to reveal a smiling Lava Destroyer.
Laughing gently, the veteran smiled warmly at all the youngsters coming into the room. Once they were all seated he stood up and introduced himself.
“Hello! I am Mreiko Kan, a Lava Golem from the Fire region!”Daintily, the scribe stepped forward and shook the veteran’s hand.
“Good to meet you again, Mr. Kan. What have you been up to?”Oodles of documents and sticks of graphite clutter Mreiko’s desk..
“I’m wrapped up in some work from the drills, but I’ve always got time for a little education. Especially seeing as you booked me a month ago, friend!”“Friend, that’s as may be.” The scribe stifled a laugh, and put down her pen, having instinctively written down every word the veteran had said so far.
“I’m hoping you’ve prepared a… presentation… of sorts?”Earnestly, the veteran stood up much straighter in his seat and reached for a pile of papers.
“Ah! My speech! Of course, how could I forget……… Well you see, younglings, I was born in the lava pools of Teningar, near the Throat of Ascent. Ah, but none of you know where those places are, do you? I’m hoping you know what a lava pool is! The Throat of Ascent is the mouth of the largest volcano in the whole of the Fire region, and Teningar is a little cave system not too far away. My body was formed from the rocks there, and my mind from the lava of the Throat and the spirit of Hermes. I’ve been allowed to live here, in the Redburrows of your Earth country, owing to my earth-based ability - and that’s from my origins as a fire creature! I was bred to work for them…"Lacking motivation, the veteran stretched out his hands, and the children looked on in awe as stony fingers extended slowly from the rocky mass. The grinding of stone on stone was almost unbearable, but it was a sound everyone in the room was used to, deep in the caves.
Energised from the children’s excitement, the veteran continued;
“My hands, look at them. Masses of rock designed for beating anyone and anything, an unstoppable force… optimised for warfare. That’s what happens when you get your genetics from a False God, kiddos. Pump me up with Earth quanta and these rocky hands turn into expanding boulders of destruction. I’m a war machine, genetically modified by a demigod - but let’s face it, the Fire nation has always been known for questionable military techniques.”Mreiko stood up from his desk, and began pacing back and forth. His immense weight made the ground shudder whenever he stepped, and the earth younglings couldn’t help but be a little afraid. They didn’t really know what was going on, but they were certainly enjoying this colossal hunk of red-hot rock marching around and telling his story.
Exhaling, the veteran sighed before speaking again.
“Anyway. Around the time of… what was it… War #2, I believe, or shortly thereafter at least, I was enlisted into the Fire Army. Part of the battalion that I had been destined for ever since I was created. The training was hard, harder than anything I’d ever done. There was pain, tears… a lot of both of those. It was all worth it in the end. Matter of fact, I met a girl named Taklia a few weeks in. Well - to you lot, I imagine she’d be indistinguishable from me! But it wasn’t long before we were married. Such was our bond. Our passion burned brightly, if you’ll excuse the pun.”Nine of the children continued to gaze up at Mreiko, but the rest were clearly disinterested by his wife, and eager to learn more about the war and the army. However, the stone veteran remained oblivious.
“Taklia… her eyes were like diamonds, her skin like granite. She’d be a monster to any of you, but to me, she was the definition of perfection… oh! Apologies. I can see none of you especially… care… at all… back to the topic, then.”Sighing, Mreiko frowned. There was something in his eyes, a displeasure of sorts. But the eyes of a Lava Golem (a Lava Destroyer no less), even to an expert, are notoriously difficult to read. Not a single person in the room noticed a thing, with the exception of the scribe, who quickly dismissed the notion as a trick of the light.
“The Throat of Ascent was where we held our graduation ceremony. Right near where I was born. The sky above was dark and dramatic, and clouds of a storm heralded our arrival. A few of us worried about what the rain could do to us, but most of us were distracted enough not to care. As much as I hate boasting - which I don’t at all, by the way - I have no shame in admitting I was top of the class. Hah, I can’t have been much older than any of you!”The veteran gazed across the room at the youngsters, and his laugh was hearty and warm like a log crackling.
So far, the children had been listening attentively, but now they were squirming uncomfortably. Not much older than them, the veteran had said. Did that mean they would have go to war soon? But they were just children! Internally, many of them were panicking.
Mreiko, again, noticed not their concern but continued his story with a distracted look in his eyes.
“Me and my team were put for sale to the generals immediately, as is the way of Fire… always far too focused on the military. That’s actually part of the reason I came to the Earth caves, to get away from all that and all the awful memories.”Mreiko froze for a second and glanced at the scribe, suddenly reminded that he was supposed to be providing positive propaganda to the youngsters and was not doing a good job. The scribe glared back, her pen poised above the paper, still ready to scrawl down whatever the veteran said next nonetheless.
Mreiko hesitated before speaking again.
“Ahem… they put us into a Monofire Rush with other Lava Destroyers, a couple of Seraphs, and a flock of the smallest Phoenixes you’ve ever seen. We were to battle in the Platinum Arena to earn resources for the army to use in the training of new troops. We were glorious! Winning, winning, winning. There was the odd loss, of course, but our track record was stellar and we were hailed as champions. Whenever we came home we were labeled as heroes, which of course, none of us had any issue with.”A dark look clouded Mreiko’s stony face, dark enough that even the younglings, unacquainted with the emotional signals of the Lava Destroyer, could see exactly what feeling he was expressing. Grief.
“Vampires made our happy times dark. En route one day to the Platinum Arena, it was dark and the only light was from the lava contained within our own bodies and the flames the Seraphs produced. I was walking hand in hand with Taklia, and the two of us were completely in love and oblivious to the rest of the world. Foolish. By the time we raised our gazes from each other and back the path, the rest of our deck was nowhere to be seen. We had strayed from the path and were completely and utterly lost in the darkness.”Mreiko looked down, and sat back at his desk. The scribe could see that there was no point trying to return him to the focus of the meeting, and the children were clearly captivated by the increasing darkness of his tale, so she reluctantly slumped back in her seat and just let the veteran proceed.
“To me they whispered from the shadows… I don’t remember what they said, and trying to do so just makes me shudder… they were vampires, masters of the night, and Taklia and I were wanted members of the top deck in the Platinum Arena. There was surely a bounty of sorts on our heads. Before we knew it the shadows had enclosed around us and we were being dragged away…”The veteran was bowing his head down over the desk such that nobody could see his face. His voice came out cracked and broken. The youngsters, of course, were lapping this up.
“An end doesn’t come easily to Vampire prisoners. They do things to them. Unspeakable things. I can’t… I can’t. When they told me to… take Taklia and… and… do something to her… I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. But they made me… I had no choice…”The concept of a vampire, a tiny creature of darkness, overpowering the massive Lava Destroyer amazed the youngsters, and they callously disregarded the veteran’s need for space.
“What did you do?” they asked him.
“What did they make you do to her?”The Lava Destroyer looked up, hot coal glowing in his eyes and fresh lava bubbling up his throat, and his voice boomed, echoing in the room.
“TO HER? WHAT I DID TO HER? I’VE TOLD YOU ALREADY, BUT WERE YOU LISTENING? NO! NO, OF COURSE NOT!”The youngsters recoiled in terror. Four or five immediately burst into tears.
As Mreiko stormed out of his own home in rage, wrecking the stone panel door, the scribe looked down at what she had written. In her perfect handwriting was every paragraph that the veteran had spoken, and she could see quite clearly exactly what the vampires had made him do. The second word of each of his speeches formed quite a disturbing story of their own. Today’s propaganda session had been a disaster.
